


The Other Side

by panaceaa



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M, Memory Loss, k2challenge18, the flowery language is strong with this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panaceaa/pseuds/panaceaa
Summary: Kenny saves Kyle's life, but it's not without a price.





	The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Townycod13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Townycod13/gifts).



Kyle doesn’t remember how he got here.

It is a place unlike any that he’s seen before. A place distinctly unknowable, with still and scentless air and a horizon that goes on for eternities yet might be nothing more than a reflection. Something calls him in the distance, a slight pull, and yet he has the suspicion that if he were to walk far enough ahead then maybe he’d end up right where he started. An endless loop to the beginning. It is both natural and unnatural. An outside world with nothing but the grass and the sky for eons, yet blink and all may crumble to dust.

He doesn’t remember how he got here, and yet again, he doesn’t remember much of anything really.

There was a car. No, a bus. A train? Something with speed and velocity that tore through the atmosphere and crashed straight into him.

At least that’s what he thinks.

In truth, all he can really recall is the boy who was standing beside him when it happened.

A boy with eyes like the afternoon sky that sparkled as he giggled at something he had said. Those same eyes growing wide and terrified in the moment before all went black.

The same boy who stands before him now.

The same, except somehow different. Not quite as he remembers him.

He is an image of a boy framed by the world. A luminescent being. Eyes slightly too bright, body bathed in an otherworldly glow. Slightly crooked smile the only thing that seems to be unchanged.

But Kyle knows deep into the root of his being exactly who this boy is. Couldn’t mistake him for anyone else. Not ever.

The boy crouches beside him in the grass, blades swaying in a nonexistent breeze. In his eyes Kyle recognizes something profoundly sad, maybe even desperate, but beyond the sorrow there is something bright, true, and vulnerable. An emotion so strong and so beautiful that Kyle would gladly let himself get swept up in it. Lost for all of time.

Leaning forward, the boy gently hugs Kyle to him, sweeping his fingers through his hair and pressing his forehead against his. Kyle closes his eyes, soaking in the feeling. Not a natural warmth of a body, but something akin to stepping out into the sun. Basking under its warmth and allowing its rays to take away a coldness that previously went unrecognized.

“Don’t go,” the boy whispers, voice so soft that it could actually have been the wind. Kyle wouldn’t be surprised if it was.

Consciousness beginning to fade, Kyle takes a deep breath and pulls him closer.

 _Kenny_.

***

He wakes up to the flashing of different scenes. Maybe visions.

Memories.

A lifetime experienced through someone else’s eyes.

 _Blood_.

He feels the pain of a thousand injuries. Looks down at an arm that is not his own as it pours blood into the cracks of the sidewalk. Crushed. Shot. Stabbed.

 _Death_.

He sees himself, eyes glazed over and sightless. Sees Stan, normally queasy at the sight of blood, staring out at a mangled torso as if it was nothing.

 _Eternity_.

At some point as Kyle watches, the pieces of himself get lost.

He can no longer find a reason as to why he should care.

***

He doesn’t know how long he stays in the world of Kenny’s memory, maybe it’s years or maybe only mere seconds have passed. Time in such places is an impossible construct to define, existing somewhere in the universe, yet not present in that one.

What Kyle does know, is that this time when he wakes it’s to reality. He knows it by the mixture of scents in the air and the press of a warm mattress along his back. Knows it by the stiffness in his joints as if he’d been lying there a while, and the subtle aches and pains throughout his body along with the pounding of his head.

Kyle sits up with a groan, he felt like fucking shit.

“Kyle!”

He looks over to see a raven haired boy, about his age, who is leaning forward in his chair and looking at him with an overjoyed and relieved expression. Kyle wants to return the smile, even if just to share some of his happiness, but he’s honestly just confused.

“Yeah...who are you?”

The boy’s smile falls, replacing it with something mirroring fear as he nervously laughs. “Uh, what?”

“Who are you?” Kyle repeats, sitting up in agitation at the strange boy sitting in his hospital room looking at him like he was the insane one.

“Kyle, it’s me. Stan.”

Kyle looks at him blankly. There’s some familiarity to the name as well as the face. Something said from above a mangled body, a boy laughing from over a river of blood, but the specifics are gone.

“Your best friend?” The boy tries again.

More out of pity than anything, Kyle slowly nods. He glances around the room, mind automatically searching for a certain blond.

“Are you the only one here?” He asks Stan.

“Well your mom and Ike went downstairs to the food court but other than them, yeah.”

“Ike?”

Stan exhales. “Your brother, dude.”

“Oh.” Kyle processes that information. He knows he should probably be more distraught, feel more like the boy in front of him who seemed to be trying his best to hold back tears, but it was hard to care for people he had no knowledge of. People he felt as if he had never met. His mind automatically goes to the one person he did know. Who he knew, and he loved. “Wait, so where’s Kenny?”

“Huh?” Some of Stan’s hurt gets replaced with true confusion at the question. “Wait you remember him?”

“Yeah, he was with me when I…” he trails off, a dozen of hazy and gruesome images flashing before his eyes. He tries to block them out, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Is he okay?”

“Uh yeah, he texted me a little bit ago saying he was on his way. But Kyle,” he says slowly, each syllable pronounced with meaning, “he wasn’t with you at the accident. You were alone, dude.”

Kyle shakes his head, Kenny’s memories still fresh in his mind. “No he was there. You just can’t remember because he died.”

Stan just continues to look at him as if he’d gone insane.

“Dude...I think maybe I should go get the doctor.”

Kyle’s about to tell him not to worry about it, when the sudden appearance of a familiar blond in the doorway knocks the air straight from his lungs. He looks half out of breath as he stumbles in, as if he had just ran across town just to get here. The moment he looks over at Kyle their eyes lock, and after experiencing a reality where he knows no one, the familiarity is like salvation.

“Kenny…” Kyle says breathlessly.

“Kyle,” the blond addresses just as softly as he steps into the room.

Stan looks between the two of them before standing from his seat. “I’m going to...go tell your mom you’re awake.”

Neither answer as he makes his hasty retreat.

Walking over, Kenny kneels beside the hospital bed. He takes his hand in his.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’ll be alright,” Kyle says giving his hand a squeeze, “but I...I think I might have some form of amnesia.” As he says the words Kenny goes impossibly tense and his gaze drops to their intertwined fingers. “I can’t remember anything,” Kyle continues, voice quiet. “Well anything except for you.”

When it’s clear Kyle’s done taking, Kenny just shakes his head slowly as if he can’t quite believe it.

“Amnesia...but that shouldn’t have-” he trails off and his eyes grow wide as if just latching onto the meaning of what Kyle had said. He looks up, eyes two glimmering pools of blue. “You remember me?”

Kyle nods. “I watched you die, Ken. Over and over and over again.”

“What?” Kenny squeaks, face growing pale.

Kyle looks at Kenny. Small and quiet Kenny. Clear blue eyes, light like the afternoon sky. Pictures how they looked wide with fear the moment before the collision happened. Remembers how his skin looked caked in blood, arms crushed under a magnitude of objects, torso left mangled in the middle of a forest clearing. Death after death after death.

“How are you still alive?”

At his words, Kenny finally lifts his gaze from their hands and offers him a little bittersweet curve of his lips. “I ask myself that everyday,” he admits, voice small and offering a sad little lift of his shoulders. “I just keep coming back.”

But it was more than that. Kyle remembered the worst part. Glazed eyes and an empty expression.

“No one remembers, do they?”

Kenny shakes his head.

“No. Not until now.” Then, like the dawn peeking out over the horizon, Kenny’s eyes light up. Relief. Happiness. As if he had been drowning all this time and someone just went and pulled him ashore.

Like he didn’t have to be alone anymore.

Kyle lightly laughs, unable to stop himself from reaching forward and running a hand through the exuberant blond’s hair. “Some strange form of amnesia, huh?”

At that, Kenny’s expression slightly falls.

“Yeah Kyle, about that-”

“Bubbe!” Whatever Kenny was going to say is interrupted by a large red-headed woman storming into the room with Stan and a younger looking black-haired boy at her side. “Stanley told us you were awake.”

Kyle stares at them before looking to Kenny, who hadn’t moved from his bedside, for help. His smile falls a little more, slowly slipping with the tide.

“Your mother and brother, Ike,” Kenny says in answer, earlier joy completely gone from his face in a moment. Replaced with something distinctly melancholy, as if he’d been given something amazing only to find that it had never been meant for him in the first place.

Kyle looks up at his family, his mother seeming to have gone completely frozen as she realized that her own son failed to recognize her. And in the silence, he’s left staring blankly at a room full of strangers. He should know them, but he doesn’t. Not a fragment of recognition, nothing besides the boy kneeling beside him and his own name.

“ _Kyle_.”

His name is spoken by Kenny and he looks to see his glistening eyes and bittersweet smile. Something that might be resolve lining his features, as if he had just made some sort of decision.

“Go back to sleep,” he breathes, leaning in closer, a quiet whisper meant to only ever be heard between the two of them. “I’ll fix this, I promise.”

And then he presses his forehead against his, a recollection of a dream.

Kyle is once again lost.

***

The next thing Kyle knows, he and Kenny are once again at the unknowable place. Sitting beside each other in the grass where the truth doesn’t have to be said to be understood.

The truth is an understanding he feels within the essence of his being. A story told within the ripples of this universe, of a plain of existence that exists somewhere between the fabric of space and time. Where they are not who they are, but what they know. A meeting of souls mixing dream and memory into the dew of the flickering grass and the unnatural stillness of the sky.

“You saved me,” Kyle states, not as a question, but as a fact.

“Yeah,” Kenny confirms unnecessarily, his voice an unearthly subset of the wind. “I did.”

“Thank you.”

Kenny nods, and Kyle looks out to the glowing horizon. Towards a path that he knows, much in the way he knows everything, will lead him back to where he belongs. To where his memories and the souls of all the people who accompany them lie in waiting for his return. A one-way journey to another realm, the realm of people who are entirely human. People like Kyle.

“If I go,” Kyle says turning his head to look at the being beside him, “will I still remember you dying?”

Kenny seems to hesitate for a moment before he slowly shakes his head.

“Probably not.”

Kyle nods, he had known that already. He needed to hear it said anyway.

His gaze flickers to the eternal horizon.

Somewhere in the distance, there is a plain where the souls of billions of people gather. A place with the light of heaven and the world, of the stars that call to him to return to his designated sky. A place that has his memories. A childhood of adventure, his best friend Stan standing at his shoulder, his worst enemy spitting insults into his face. Of growing up, his parents and brother sitting across from him at the dinner table. Summer days and cold spring nights, things once lived now lost in the flow of time.

He looks beside him.

Kenny glows with something distinctly unnatural. An angel without wings. An eldritch monster taken the form of a boy. A boy with bright blue eyes. Fading light in the darkest of memories. Of blood splattered streets and a dozen eyes that glossed over him as if he wasn’t there. As if this plain, this grass, this world, this was the only place he could ever truly be.

Reaching over with steady fingers, Kyle takes his hand and vows to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was written for Towny's k2 challenge and the prompt was Amnesia. Yes, amnesia. Okay so I might have seen it and been instantly inspired to write an amnesia fic where Kyle forgot everything but Kenny's deaths...but then it kind of got away from me and this is what happened. Have I mentioned that I really like flowery language?
> 
> This fic has amazing fanart thanks to PaisleyWraith and Townycod13. They're beyond beautiful and please go look at them using the tag if you haven't already:  
> https://panacea-for-all-evil.tumblr.com/search/TheOtherSidefictag


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